the house Ipatiev (Ipatievsky dom) owes its name with its former owner, an industrialist named Nicholaï Ipatiev. The Ipatiev house or " House with destination spéciale" (or " The House of the Particulières" Intentions;) was located at Iekaterinbourg in the Ural.

It is in this house that were sequestered then carried out the tsar Nicolas II and its family.

The Ipatiev villa

When the Bolsheviks decided to imprison the Romanov family in Iekaterinbourg, they chose a house located in the historical center of the city on the street Voznessenski to be used to them as prison, the Ipatiev house, of the name of the owner at the time. This man lived with his family on the first floor, the ground floor being used to him as offices for his metallurgy company which it directed. It was a roomy house (18 X 31 meters), modern, comfortable because equipped with electricity, telephone and even of a bathroom and WC. This house also comprised a small terrace giving on a garden.

The house was built on a double slope and part of the ground floor giving on the street Voznessenski thus proved to be quasi a basement.

The house had been built in 1897 for certain Andrei Redikortsev who was engineer in the mines. But this man had been implied in a vast corruption affair had been forced to sell his house to another man: IG Charaviev. This man also worked for the platinum mines in the west of the Ural. It is a little later, into 1908 that IG Charaviev resold its house with Nicolas Ipatiev for 6000 roubles of the time.

10 years later, on Saturday, April 27, 1918, the Bolsheviks requisitioned her house while asking Nicolas Ipatiev to evacuate it under two days. It was about a momentary requisition and it was authorized to store its business in a part of the basement (contiguous at piece-rates where will be carried out the Romanov family 3 months later) which were placed under seals. After the departure of Nicolas Ipatiev, his house was surrounded by a double wood palisade going until the fact of the windows, of the machine-guns installed on the roof transformed the house into fortress. The Ipatiev house was ready to accommodate the family Romanov which arrived there to some extent on April 30th (Nicolas, Alexandra and Maria) then followed by the remainder of the remained family in Tobolsk on May 23rd because of a crisis of hemophilia of Alexis who made it untransportable.

It is curious to note - and Romanov will undoubtedly see disastrous there predicts - that in 1613, the founder of the Romanov dynasty, Mikhail Fedorovich, was in the monastery of Ipatiev, close to Kostroma, when it accepted his load of Tsar near a Moscovite embassy. Strange épanadiplose of the destiny…

Guard of the imperial family

The guard of the imperial family is ensured by men having all the confidence of the police chief Iakovlev, they are workmen working in the neighbouring factories. The commander Avdeïev order guard external and interior of the Ipatiev house. The housing of the commander and ten other guards was on the floor reserved for the imperial family. This cohabitation will be source for the family members imperial of many vexations, they will be the victims of ceaseless gibes on behalf of the guards, of doubtful jokes against the young large-duchesses. No intimacy was possible for each family member of Nicolas II of Russia, who was in the obligation to divide this villa with their geôliers.

It is in the cellar of the Ipatiev villa that in the night of the 16 to the July 17th 1918 took place the massacre of the imperial family accompanied in death by the doctor Ievgueni Botkine, of three servants: the cook of the imperial family Ivan Kharitonov, of the manservant Alexis Trupp, the chambermaid Anna Demidova which was assassinated with blows of bayonet.

The Ipatiev house today

Villa Ipatiev it nowadays remains nothing any more. In 1977, the villa was destroyed on the order of Moscow. It is certain a Boris Eltsine then first secretary of the Communist party of Sverdlovsk (Name which Iekaterinbourg between 1924 and 1991 took) which was in charge of the demolition with what was the witness of the fine tragedy of Nicolas II and his family. Like the Prison of the Temple after the French revolution, the Ipatiev villa attracted much curious, some coming in pilgrimage on the spot from the martyr from the last tsar from Russia. On its site was set up an orthodoxe cross. In spite of the destruction of the Ipatiev villa of many people continued to go on the spot of the massacre, some of them deposited in an anonymous way a bouquet of flower, others married hoping to receive the blessing of this tsar become with the eyes of some a saint martyr.

Very recently, a church has just been built on the spot even where was held the appalling drama of the July 16th 1918 which saw the death of the last emperor of Russia and that of Holy Russia.

Sources

• Nicolas II of Russia of Henri Troyat

Internal bonds

• Nicolas II of Russia

• Alexandra of Hesse-Darmstadt
• Iekaterinbourg

External bond

• Ipatiev House - Romanov Memorial
• Article of the Barber: “ the ultimate mystery of Romanov soon raised ”. (October 12th, 2007)